Wednesday, July 13, 2022

Moe Anime could Revive Utopian Science Fiction

The reason Utopian Science Fiction died out is because the Western World's taste in fiction became increasingly over fixated on the importance of things like "Conflict" and "Stakes" and "Character Development".  So settings where our major problems have already been solved are considered "uninteresting" and "boring".

Now there is also the common claim it was also killed by the World Wars and the Holocaust and then further tragic events of the late 60s and 70s made people less willing to believe that a Utopia is possible.  But I disagree with that, horrible events only make us desire optimistic fantasies more.

The most well known and popular work of Utopian Sci-Fi was early Star Trek, but it was never purely Utopian, presumably Earth and other core Federation worlds were, but the stories kept revolving around conflicts with and explorations of more flawed societies.  And in time Star Trek refused to stay even that Utopian and so it betrayed it's roots over and over again till we wind up with dreary depressing shows like Picard and Discovery, or cynical edgy parodies like Lower Decks.

However Anime via the Slice of Life and Cute Girls doing Cute Things Genres has discovered how to make us enjoy fiction that is actually utterly free of any real conflict.  From Lucky Star to K-On to Yuru Yuri and so many others.  And we've also seen a sub genre of Isekai translate that formula into a Fantasy Setting like the 300 Slimes show.

So what we need is a show about Cute Girls doing Cute Things in a High-Tech Futuristic Communist Utopia where Climate Change has been solved and Scarcity eliminated.  And it can be Fun and Cute but also educational about how such a society could hypothetically work.

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